Retail businesses often make visual announcements by hand lettering or stenciling display surfaces such as windows or by hanging posters or newspaper advertisements. Such announcements may be unsightly unless an inordinate amount of time is devoted to their creation and application.
Visual announcements may also take the form of decals which may incorporate ornamentation and can be highly attractive. However, decals are expensive to create and difficult to remove. Because water-soak decals tend to be cumbersome, slow to apply, and difficult to position, pressure-sensitive adhesive decals have come into widespread use. However, either the adhesive must be applied in register with the graphics or some mechanism must be provided to separate the adhesive at the precise outline of the graphics. These requirements are particularly difficult to achieve if the graphics have fine detail.